After a detour into the superhero genre, David Ayer is back to making gritty cop dramas — but with a twist. The End of Watch director brought some of his Suicide Squad stars on board for his Netflix film Bright, which combines Ayer’s buddy-cop sensibilities with some of the supernatural elements he played with in his DCEU film.

Because you know the only thing missing from a buddy-cop movie are orcs.

Smith - Joel - Edgerton - Star - LAPD

Will Smith and Joel Edgerton star as two LAPD officers reluctantly paired together. But it’s more than just a clash of personalities — Edgerton plays the first orc police officer in a world where orcs and fairies co-exist warily with the human race, and are often subjected to cruelty and discrimination.

“It seems to be a pretty normal world” at first, Smith says in the new featurette advertising Ayer’s latest movie. Smith and Ike Barinholtz are the holdovers from Suicide Squad who are joining Ayer on his next endeavor, which looks as grim and brutal as his last few films.

Feature - Film - Bright - Delights - Tensions

Like many a sci-fi feature film, Bright delights in taking real-life racial tensions and turning them into a fantastical allegory, with the police violence against orcs reflecting the current struggles that black Americans are undergoing. It seems a bit heavy-handed, especially when star Noomi Rapace passionately declares, “It’s L.A. right now. It just happens...